1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to railway vehicle structure and in particular to a wear member for use between a pair of relatively movable components of such structure.
2. Prior Art Statement
It is known in the art to provide a wear member supported by at least one of a pair of relatively movable components of a railway vehicle for the purpose of protecting the components from wear. However, heretofore it has been common practice to provide a wear member made either entirely of a hard metal or entirely of a hard polymeric material and such wear member is suitably supported in position between such components and once the wear member becomes excessively worn it is removed and a new one installed in its position. However, metal wear members are usally made of comparatively expensive metallic materials and do not have optimum antifriction properties while wear members made entirely of polymeric material have comparatively poor structural strength and thus are often easily broken requiring frequent replacement.
It has also been proposed heretofore to provide so-called wear members or liners for center plate structure of a railway vehicle with reinforcing material embedded therein as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,888; however, such liners have minimum structural strength and in use are confined between associated supporting surfaces.
Further, it has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,554,618 to provide a wear member in the form of a pedestal liner which has a substantially unsupported insert or plastic wear plate.
It has also been proposed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 27,340, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,238,039, issued Dec. 9, 1980, to provide a wear member comprising a support having a continuous planar supporting surface, a polymeric material, and means attaching the polymeric material to the support and supporting same against the continuous supporting surface for the purpose of providing a substantially structurally self supporting wear member.